Manually Provision a Bonsol Node

Bonsol has a fully featured Docker image and Helm chart that can be used to run a Bonsol node on Kubernetes. For more information on how to run a Bonsol node on kubernetes check out the Run a Bonsol Node on Kubernetes guide.

Prerequisites

  • A keypair for the node, you need some SOL to pay for the transactions

  • A Dragons mouth compatible rpc provider endpoint Dragons Mouth Docs click here to get one from Triton One

  • Docker on your local machine (not required on the node)

  • The node will do better if it has a gpu with cuda installed, which will require nvidia drivers and tools.

Note: Ansible role coming soon

Hardware Requirements

To run a Bonsol prover node effectively, you'll need:

CPU:

  • Minimum: 4 cores / 8 threads

  • Recommended: 8 cores / 16 threads for better proof generation performance

  • Architecture: x86_64

Memory:

  • Minimum: 16 GB RAM

  • Recommended: 32 GB RAM

Storage:

  • Minimum: 100 GB SSD available space

  • Recommended: 250 GB+ SSD for image caching

GPU (Optional but recommended):

  • Minimum: GTX 1060 6GB or equivalent

  • Recommended: RTX 3060 or better

  • Required: CUDA 11.0+

Network:

  • Stable internet connection with at least 100 Mbps bandwidth

  • Low latency connection to your RPC provider

Note: While a GPU is optional, nodes with CUDA-capable GPUs will have significantly better proof generation performance and may be more competitive in the network.

Installing Deps

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- --default-toolchain 1.81.0 -y

Ensure cargo is on the path

On your local machine, you will need to run a Docker image to get the needed Groth16 witness generator and snark binary.On your local machine, you will need to run a Docker image to get the needed Groth16 witness generator and snark binary. This script will download them from the internet and save them in the current directory use --prefix to change the output directory

./bin/setup.sh

You will have a director called snark with the binaries in it. You need to copy these binaries to the node and remember the path to the snark directory.

# on the node
sudo mkdir -p /opt/bonsol/stark
sudo chown -R ubuntu /opt/bonsol/stark
sudo mkdir -p /opt/bonsol/keys
sudo chown -R ubuntu /opt/bonsol/keys
# on your local computer

scp -i <your_ssh_key> -r stark/* <node_user>@<node ip>:/opt/bonsol/stark

You will put the path in the stark_compression_tools_path in the config file.

Upload the keypair to the node

You will need to upload the keypair to the node.

scp -r <keypair path> <node ip>:/opt/bonsol/keys/

You will put the path in the section below of the config file.you will put the path in the below section of the config file.

[signer_config]
  KeypairFile = { path = "<your keypair path>" }

Installing Bonsol

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/anagrambuild/bonsol.git bonsol
cd bonsol/
cargo build -f cuda --release

Configuring the Node

You will need to create a config file for the node. The config file is a toml file that contains the configuration for the node.

touch Node.toml

Here is an example of a config file.

risc0_image_folder = "/opt/bonsol/risc0_images"
max_input_size_mb = 10
image_download_timeout_secs = 60
input_download_timeout_secs = 60
maximum_concurrent_proofs = 1
max_image_size_mb = 4
image_compression_ttl_hours = 24
env = "dev"
stark_compression_tools_path = "<the path to the stark directory>"
missing_image_strategy = "DownloadAndClaim"
[metrics_config]
  Prometheus = {}
[ingester_config]
RpcBlockSubscription = { wss_rpc_url = "<your websockets endpoint>" }
[transaction_sender_config]
  Rpc = { rpc_url = "<your solana rpc endpoint>" }
[signer_config]
  KeypairFile = { path = "<your keypair path>" }

Running the Node

After building the relay package, you can run the node with the following command.

ulimit -s unlimited //this is required for the c++ groth16 witness generator it will blow your stack without a huge stack size
#from within the bonsol root dir
./target/release/relay -f Node.toml

Running the Node with systemd

You can use the following systemd service file to run the node.

[Unit]
Description=Bonsol Node
After=network.target
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ubuntu
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
LimitSTACK=infinity
LimitNOFILE=1000000
LogRateLimitIntervalSec=0
WorkingDirectory=/home/ubuntu/bonsol
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/bonsol/target/release/bonsol-node -f Node.toml

# Create BACKTRACE only on panics
Environment="RUST_BACKTRACE=1"
Environment="RUST_LIB_BACKTRACE=0"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

You will need to copy this file /etc/systemd/system/bonsol.service and then run the following command. After that, you can reload the systemd daemon and start the service with the following command.

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start bonsol

Installing Alloy is out of the scope of this guide, but you can follow the Grafana Cloud docs to install it.

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